


Fleeting, Stolen Glances

by SilverShortyyy



Category: Carol (2015), The Price of Salt - Patricia Highsmith
Genre: Angst, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-10
Updated: 2018-06-10
Packaged: 2019-05-20 10:52:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 969
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14893256
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SilverShortyyy/pseuds/SilverShortyyy
Summary: Carol wonders if they’ll really meet again. Her heart tells her they will, but can she really trust her heart now? After everything?Carol muses about things in a park in Vermont, about Therese and about falling in love, about the possibility of seeing Therese again, and more painfully, the possibility of never being with Therese again.





	Fleeting, Stolen Glances

Even in her youth, Carol had already been one to turn heads. The most attractive girl in the room, or the most attractive woman in the room, or whatever other variations it could have yet still keeping the same idea.

She wonders how many people have looked at her, seen past the blonde hair and gray eyes and perfect, porcelain skin, and had fallen in love with her at first glance.

Once, she’d have said it’s impossible to fall in love with someone without knowing them. But then, she thinks, if a glance is enough to jostle even the most forgotten corners of a soul, if the ghost of the memory of some other lifetime comes to the surface at one glimpse, if the whole world suddenly seems to awaken with color at the sight of someone from across the room—well, couldn’t that be it? Falling in love at first sight? And yet, there’s years and years of having known the person, but it had been buried through lives lived and lives expired, decades and decades and centuries ago, lives transcending time and space because real, true love couldn’t possibly be contained in just one lifetime, could it?

She wonders.

Carol thinks of the many people who might have, could have seen her and felt that pull, felt that galactic gravity at the mere sight of her blonde head of hair. Had they fallen in love with her, had their soul remembered a love long lost? Was it her beauty that shook the memory, or something else entirely? And yet her head had not turned to them, so maybe fate was only so kind to have led their eyes to marvel at her.

Maybe they loved her once, a few lifetimes ago. Maybe she’d gone and had a tryst with one, an affair with another. A brief romance with some, a summer dalliance with others.

And then… And then there was Therese.

Therese, whose hazel eyes Carol might have loved yesterday, or last week, or last month or last year or the last decade or the last life, through heaven and hell and time and space and through universes and universes of possibility. Therese, whose soft lips Carol would dare say have kissed once before, if not a million times before, even before her gray eyes set sight on Therese from across the busy toy store.

That was another thing. The toy store was crowded. Extremely so. And yet they’ve found each other; how did everything fall into place, just like that?

Carol thinks of the river below her, its rippling currents carrying leaves away from behind her over to the horizon. The bridge in the park is red, a dark, faded red, like lipstick worn through the night.

Therese would love walking through this park. Such scenery, such serenity; yet the thought of the innocent smile, the stubborn eyes sent Carol down.

Down. Down, down, down, down, down.

Maybe those days were just like the first glance. Stolen, swept away at the nick of time and kept close while at risk of getting caught. And she did get caught, didn’t she? But she wouldn’t live it down, wouldn’t pretend it was all a getaway.

Therese would think so. Think that it had all been a game, Carol’s pity party for herself.

And maybe it was. Or maybe it wasn’t.

Would Carol even have a chance to apologize for the possibility that such a thought would find itself in Therese’s beautiful head?

_“Don’t you know I love you?” And I still do, dearest. I still do._

Carol wonders if everything had gone too quickly. Maybe she should have waited, waited till the end of the proceedings, waited before asking Therese to runaway with her, before letting Therese share a bed with her and before touching Therese the way lovers do.

She doesn't regret it though. Doesn’t regret letting Therese claim the title of her lover. _My lover._ How sweet it is on her lips, how sweet and how sad because it’s over now, isn’t it?

Didn’t she, Carol, see to that?

No. She didn’t, she didn’t. She couldn’t have. But Therese is alone now, and flowers can only bloom for so long without being watered nor shined upon. But Therese will bloom, on her own, into a beautiful young woman, a woman that Carol will love and will have lost, because life is treacherous but so, so intoxicating, and love is but the greatest gamble of all.

Carol watches a petal fall onto the surface of the water.

Ripples. She remembers the sudden rattle in the world, like an earthquake, the moment her gray eyes met hazel ones.

It was like rehearsing a well known scene, one that time remembers very well and that history will never forget.

Will Therese forget it?

Ripples, that grow smaller and smaller the farther they are from the petal, and Carol thinks that yes, Therese will forget it. It will take time, but she will. One day, Carol will be nothing but a distant memory to Therese, nothing but the whirlwind romance that—

Carol hopes Therese doesn’t look back and think it was a mistake.

Ripples, but the petal flows anyway, with the current, bobbing and flowing and shrinking. Smaller and smaller, until Carol could no longer distinguish it from the distant waters of the river.

Therese suddenly feels so far, so unreachable.

Carol wonders if they’ll ever see each other again.

Carol wonders if they could ever be the same.

Carol wonders if Therese still loves her, and if Therese could at least find it in herself to forgive Carol.

When Carol comes back to what she calls home here in Vermont, she finds Therese’s flowers giving her answers she doesn’t want.

Flowers really do wither without neither sun nor water.


End file.
